I thought this David Ho painting was cool (named "catch a star").Since we have been doing some utilization of provocative art in the past few days, it was a shoe in.
And since I first thought about human endeavors depicted in Ho's work in an Ecocosmology Blog post some time back, called Life According To Science, I had to share the cosmic impotence with the MOMCOM crowd.
Especially since we recently gave the Family Radio Church a hard time for predicting the end of the world on May 21, 2011, why not share the scorn with those who know better than to use pixels on an X Y graph or calendar?
Religion and science come to the same ultimate conclusion in principle, it is just that scientists are more "sophisticated" in their dire predictions, mainly because they are for the most part funded by MOMCOM, and have their rhetoric "down".
Yes, "You are going to die on May 21!" is not as cosmopolitan to the 21st Century amygdala as "You are going to die in 432 billion years!"
Meanwhile, tomorrow the new Ho House of Misrepresentatives comes up to Washington town to try to catch a star.
I call that B rated movie "The Borg Goes To Washington", which interestingly is also depicted in the graphic Ho painting.
Also meanwhile, the currents in the oceans are going to kill a lot of us.
Who says the blockheads in congress don't have anything in common with Mother Nature?
Dredd,
ReplyDeleteI was considering a spoof post of the Family Church along the lines of them commercializing the rapture, the second coming, or whatever it is they're predicting on May 21 - until I actually checked out their web site that is. These dudes have already kicked into overdrive on the issue of commercialization, with painted RVs, T-Shirts, literature for the masses etc. Wouldn't be surprised to see them buying Super Bowl ad time if their pockets are that deep.
Needless to say, its pretty hard to parody such a target when they're already doing such a wonderful job themselves. I highly recommend their web site to anyone who's in need of a few laughs. It will be very interesting to see what their take on events is on the morning of May 22. And if they're right, I'll sure wish I had invested in their Family Church Mylar/Asbestos Hellcoat ($66.66, Sizes XXXS-XXXL, Family Church Visa accepted) to comfort me in my eternity in hell.
On a different note, I don't know if you've seen this link - Political views 'hard-wired' into your brain - yet (hint: it's in the amygdala, and it's mostly a conservative "fear" issue), but I'll bet it will have you crowing like the cock of the walk for a while. Nothing like being exactly right on a subject before the masses get a clue. Good work Dreddster!
Oh yeah. The artwork's great again today too.
GOP knot heads John McCain and Paul Ryan were on Today this morning crowing about how happy they are to be back in town "doing the people's business," aka declaring all out war on the dem agenda. Both were grinning ear to ear while declaring their total opposition to everything NoBama, most especially health care (of course) and dicretionary spending (aka social programs) to the exclusion of Defense and Security.
ReplyDeleteMatt and Meredith really did do pretty good interviews, basically calling out both for obstructionism and baiting them to admit it, but good GOP soldiers that they are, neither were biting. The sheer arrogance of both was striking. It's gonna be an awfully interesting two years ahead, but the mind reels at the thought of what's ahead in 2013 with nut jobs like this being politically replicated on a mass scale. Maybe we should hope the Family Churchers are right afterall?
"The Borg goes to Washington". Right on.
ReplyDeleteFrom a comment to a blog post over at Naked Capitalism:
ReplyDeleteJim Haygood says:
January 5, 2011 at 8:59 am
At least in terms of drone attacks — a uniquely cowardly form of state terrorism — Peace Laureate O’Bomber is emerging as an even bigger war criminal than his predecessor Airman Bush:
As many as 2,043 people, mostly civilians, were killed in US drone attacks in northwestern parts of Pakistan during the last five years, research has revealed.
The yearly report of Conflict Monitoring Centre (CMC) has termed the CIA drone strikes as an ‘assassination campaign turning out to be revenge campaign’, and showed that 2010 was the deadliest year ever of causalities resulted in drone-hits in Pakistan.
According to the report, 134 drone attacks were reported in Pakistan’s FATA region in 2010 alone, inflicting 929 causalities. December 17 was the deadliest day of 2010 when three drone attacks killed 54 people in Khyber Agency.
Regarding civilian causalities and attacks on women and children, the report said: “People in the tribal belt usually carry guns and ammunition as a tradition. US drones will identify anyone carrying a gun as a militant and subsequently he will be killed.”
“Many times, people involved in rescue activities also come under attack. The assumption that these people are supporters of militants is quite wrong,” The Nation quoted the CMC report as stating.
The document cited the Brooking Institute’s research, which suggested that with every militant killed, nearly ten civilians also died.
http://www.uruknet.de/?s1=1&p=73511&s2=03
Hey, hey, Barack I say
How many kids did ya kill today?
The use of ad homimen applications to individuals as a remedy for systemic problems is not reasonable in the long run.
ReplyDeleteIndividuals are morphed in the W direction by a bad system getting worse.
The MOMCOM system must be normalized with system wide applications of traditional American peace.
When we stop worshiping and glorifying war and exceptionalism, the hot, toxic air will slowly exit the inflated national amygdala.
We killed a million people in the Iraq war, made 4 million refugees; and guess what, a substantial number of them were innocent, whether children or not.
The use of ad homimen applications to individuals as a remedy for systemic problems is not reasonable in the long run.
ReplyDeleteMaybe, maybe not. But it's individuals, especially presidents that put a face on policies and are the final decision makers in any case. Afghanistan and Iraq stoped being Bush's problem as soon as NoBama decided to continue and even escalate them both (not that I wouldn't love to see Bush indicted as well - maybe on May 21st?). By the way, I hear a lot of people referring to Iraq in the past tense. Last time I heard we still had well over 50K imperialist troops in garrison there.
Vietnam was obviously a larger systemic problem as well, but it was only after sufficient pressure was put on Nixon and Kissinger that the bullshit - including escalation into neighboring Cambodia (aka Pakistan) finally stopped. It's time to stop giving NoBama a pass for this crap and call him out as the warmonger that he is. Frankly, I don't even care why he is the way he is, only that he's nothing that he represented himself to be when he ran for office.
If individuals, not systemic corruption, was the problem getting rid of Bush II would have solved the problem.
ReplyDeleteObama has become corrupted by the warmonger religion of the MOMCOM realm just as Bush II was.
Getting rid of Obama will not change the systemic problem any more than getting rid of Bush II would have.
Remember the post Will Elections Cure The Disease? for example.
OK, those are good and valid points. But you're still not going to change a system as a whole without first changing some of the individuals in it. When you elect a "reformer" president and he turns out to be the exact opposite from day one, you've obviously either got a corrupt individual (among legions), OR, as I have alleged many times, you've got a puppet that the corrupt "system" got to before he ever took office. I think the case for NoBama being in that last category is now almost incontrovertible. That still doesn't let him off the hook individually for being a war criminal, but it sure magnifies the overall problem to a completely higher level.
ReplyDeleteWhen systemic corruption requires one to be corrupt in some way as a pre-requisite to entering the system in the first place, individualism is just another word for unique social security number.
ReplyDelete"When you elect a "reformer" president and he turns out to be the exact opposite from day one, you've obviously either got a corrupt individual (among legions), OR, as I have alleged many times, you've got a puppet that the corrupt "system" got to before he ever took office."
ReplyDeleteYep.
When systemic corruption requires one to be corrupt in some way as a pre-requisite to entering the system in the first place, individualism is just another word for unique social security number.
ReplyDeleteRandy,
Exactly right, and well put as well! However, if you follow that logic where it leads, you simply must conclude that it's game, set, and match for the American "democratic experiment", which is pretty much where my head's at at this point as well.
On the other hand, if you still hold out any hope at all for "change we can beleive in," then you simply must hope that a few plucky individuals with tremendous vision and courage (are they extinct?) will be willing and able to swim against the tide and actually begin a groundswell to affect change in the other direction.
I'll admit, I don't believe such individuals currently, nor are they likely to, exist in the near future. I think things have simply swung too far to recover without some sort of devastating crash, and I think it's right around the corner too (depending on your definition of "crash," which is not going to be a simple one time event, but a series of mild to devastating events, the first of which will definitely be no later than 2012).
In spite of all that, I'm still gonna call out the individiual sell-outs - dem or Repube, especially when they advertise themselves as a genuine and credible alternative - out every time, or at least until they clamp down on the internet and such expression becomes effectively impossible. Which, given all of the above, is probably right around the corner too.